Stories about food. Songs about food. A long-cherished recipe (and a chance to win a piece of that cake). A cooking demonstration.

Why not start the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival with a show about food? It’s the one thing everyone can relate to.

Beth Ely Sleboda

This show is really 30 or more years in the making for Beth Ely Sleboda, who will sing, talk, play the dulcimer and cook during Yum!, which starts at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Writers & Books, 740 University Ave.

This lair of Anonymous Willpower – the shadowy, band-flier filled basement of a house in Irondequoit – seems too small to hold the band, too confined for the sound.

One ill-considered wave of the electric guitar by Chris DiStasio, standing next to his amp in one corner of the room, seems likely to catch trumpet player Emily Champion on the side of the head. Bassist Harry Roberts looks unperturbed enough, standing near a lamp for cover, but as a 30-year-veteran of the local scene, he’s likely seen much worse. Drummer Greg Andrews is tucked away in a corner, and staring at Reynolds’ back for most of the night will have to do. Keyboardist Don Anonymous has his back to the wall, allowing as much space as possible in the tiny room to go to his wife: the band’s lead singer, a force of nature, and a superbly attentive waitress to the outside world, Suzi Willpower.

This is likely the only act at the Rochester Fringe Festival that will throw the word “obsequious” at its audience.

“Faces of Madness: Classic Tales of the Insane Mind” is “stories that describe how the protagonist was driven to insanity,” says Heather Fox, an East Rochester resident and theater professor at Monroe Community College. The 5:30 p.m. Saturday show at RAPA’s East End Theater, 727 E. Main St., is a blend of Victorian Gothic horror and the avant-garde, as the players, bound in straitjackets, move across the stage like zombies in an ether fog. They are Fox, theater major Tracy Chang of Gorham, cinema and theater major Kiyomi Oliver of Rochester, and MCC liberal arts grad Gretchen Thomas of East Rochester.

On a frosty January morning in 2010, two Marines knocked on the door of Michael and Andrea Deebs’ house in Hornell, Steuben County.

The soldiers asked to see the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Anne, who was staying with them. Tersely, they delivered the news that she dreaded hearing: Her husband, Zach Smith, had just been killed in Afghanistan. He was 19.

Four days into his first combat mission, he had stepped on an IED (improvised explosive device). As another soldier rushed to his aid, a second IED went off and killed them both.

One of the first to learn about Zach’s death was Hornell native Gloria Gambino, a Nazareth College theater major and a close friend of Anne.

The talent we have in Rochester because of the Eastman School of Music has certainly been on display this weekend at Greentopia.

This afternoon, the Ying Quartet, the Eastman Saxophone Project and Barry Snyder were to give a sneak peek at the sounds that will be coming from Gibbs Street in October during the Debussy Festival. On tap were some of Debussy’s pieces about nature.

That programming certainly fits within Greentopia, which is all about respect for the environment.

The Ying Quartet debuts Jeff Tyzik's "Tarantella" at Greentopia.

The concert Saturday afternoon might have fit even more with the core sustainability theme of the fest. The Ying Quartet debuted a piece by Jeff Tyzik called “Tarantella” and that contained themes that will be in his New York Cityscape score that will debut at a Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra Pops concert in February with the Rochester City Ballet.

(This is another in our series of little-known facts about Rochester arts organizations celebrating anniversaries this year.)

Geva Theatre Center’s first production this season, the comedy You Can’t Take It With You, stars Robert Vaughn (best known for his acting in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. )

As it happens, Geva has a long history of including stars in its shows – sometimes before they’re discovered by Hollywood or Broadway, sometimes afterward. Here are three celebrities who had lead roles at Geva:

- Georgie Engel was in Geva’s production of Born Yesterday during its 1983-1984 season. She achieved stardom as Georgette Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as Pat MacDougal in Everybody Loves Raymond.

In recent years, jumbo-sized puppets have come out to play in Rochester. They filled a jungle in The Lion King and an an urban jungle in Avenue Q at the Auditorium Theatre, among other sightings.

Soon they’ll invade Xerox Auditorium for two nights of comedy on Sept. 20 and 22. Towering 28 inches high and full of attitude, they’ll perform PuppetProv, the Musical. Six human members of Unleashed! Improv will share the stage with them, just to make sure they don’t get out of hand.

“A puppet musical is different from what we usually do,” says Kerry Young, a founding member of the Unleashed! Improv troupe. “It’s challenging and new, very much in the spirit of the Fringe Festival.”

In 1945, Memorial Art Gallery leaders thought that a new painting of a fish would create quite a splash. Instead, it caused a stink.

The abstract painting in question was byLeon Salter and had just received the Jurors’ Award at the Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition. But abstract art was not universally loved by MAG visitors. They came in droves to see Salter’s work, and fiercely disagreed about its merits. At one point, police had to be called in to keep the peace.

Isabel and Gertrude Herdle, the sisters who directed MAG, decided that it was high time to educate Rochester about abstract art. Later that year, they organized an exhibit of modern works and bought Salter’s painting for MAG’s permanent collection.

The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House will close in January and February for a complete renovation.

A government grant will pay for all new seats, which is good news for anyone who has sat through a long movie there.

They will be maroon, and the theater will be redone in dark colors, to make the movie-watching experience better, spokeswoman Dresden Engle told a group of arts professionals in the area. (Jane Sutter, director of community partnerships and niche content, here at the D&C and I were guests there.)

Because they will be bigger and more comfortable, there will only be room for 500, instead of 535, seats.

Former punks, now all grown up and taken seriously, Green Day has a 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13 date at the Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial.

The band is touring in support of the upcoming release of three new albums, called ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! (kind of a joke on that last one: the drummer’s name is Tré Cool). The band received considerable acclaim for the presentation of its album American Idiot as a Broadway play in 2010.

Tickets ($27.50, $52 and $62) go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday at ticketmaster.com, (800) 745-3000 and the arena box office. Each ticket purchased comes with a digital copy of ¡Uno!, which is released officially on Sept. 25.

Green Day’s last appearance in the area was a 2010 show at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center.

Jeff Spevak has shaken the hand of Johnny Cash. He has done a shot of whiskey with Bo Diddley. He sang with Tina Turner for 12 seconds. His Top 10 albums of all time include 17 by Bob Dylan. He likes dogs, the Cleveland Indians and wine. His favorite books are Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He likes to eat Chilean sea bass.

Catherine Roberts: Lead Local Editor/Life, is the mother of two teenage boys. She's so used to being overbooked that when there's a spare moment, she feels the needs to know what's going on around town to fill the gap. Favorite things in Rochester include the museums, Red Wings games and concerts. But most of the time, you'll find her and her husband, Chad (the Democrat and Chronicle's overnight editor), at a bowling alley, the sidelines of a ball field or walking a dog in their Irondequoit neighborhood or Durand-Eastman Park. If you have any ideas, please email at cathyr@DemocratandChronicle.com

Diana Louise Carter was born at Rochester General Hospital the same year it opened and reared in Bristol, Ontario County. After college and grad school, her first reporting job was on a small newspaper in Western Massachusetts. She returned to Rochester in late 1987 to work for the Democrat and Chronicle. Carter covers agriculture and banking. She lives in the Upper Monroe neighborhood of Rochester with her husband and three children.

Anna Reguero, a former Democrat and Chronicle music critic, a clarinetist and a graduate of Eastman School of Music, is a doctoral student in musicology at State University of New York at Stony Brook.